Friday, May 23, 2014

Nymphomaniac (Lars Von Trier, 2013)

In a recent article film
critic Matt Zoller Seitz advises wannabe film critics, among other things, to study history and psychology. I was reminded of his advice
while watching Nymphomaniac, and especially I was wondering
in which way psychology, and psychoanalysis in particular, has influenced
filmmaking and film criticism. Indeed, a lot of movies these days seem to have
been bathed in psychoanalysis − Spider, The
Machinist and Black Swan are just the first
examples coming to my mind. That's something even a layman on the subject like
me can easily recognize, since, as anthropologist Henrietta L. Moore points out in her book
A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender,

"Psychoanalysis
has entered popular culture [...]. Not very much may be known about
psychoanalytic theory, but a whole series of popular experiences − like
motivation in crime novels and television dramas − has been profoundly
influenced by theories of causation and personality development based on a
version of psychoanalytic thought."

The topic
deserves greater attention than my limited knowledge allows. Indeed, the book Psychoanalysis and Cinema by film theorist Christian Metz
seems to be an essential reference point. I will concentrate
just on these two aspects: How much the common practice among certain
filmmakers of venturing into Freudian territory has contributed to flatten out
film characters and plots, and to what extent Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac can be considered a critical response to this approach?

Let's start
from the beginning: The publication of Sigmund Freud's The
Interpretation of Dreams in year 1900 is usually considered a
landmark in the foundation of psychoanalysis. The first attempts to interpret art
in a psychoanalytic light date back not much later: Freud himself provided
re-readings of some literary works, for example Whilelm Jensen's
Gradiva (1907) and Shakespeare's King Lear (1913). But the first attempt to interpret a film from a psychoanalytic
perspective was made by psychologist and writer Otto Rank, who in 1914 wrote
the essay "The Doppelgänger" about the theme of the double in the
1913 film Der Student von Prag.

Since the
early days of psychoanalysis, retrospectively analyzing artworks from a
psychoanalytic viewpoint has somewhat become a widespread practice, and
in some occasions it has helped uncover deeper layers of meaning within an
author's work. But psychoanalysis has deeply changed not only the way we
interpret art, but art production as well. Today, in an age when psychoanalytic
theories are organized in a coherent, systematic corpus, and words like
"Freudian slip" or "phallic symbol" have entered our daily
vocabulary, authors can consciously draw on psychoanalysis (or a
popularized version of it) for artistic purposes with the confident certainty
that a large portion of the audience will be able to pick up the clues. And of
course, the fact that psychoanalysis has become an artistic device like many
others is something that has irreversibly altered once more
critical analysis. We cannot ignore the fact that on the market there even
exist handbooks on the subject. Here's a passage from the introduction of
William Indick's Psychology for Screenwriters:

"The
fruitful world of psychoanalytic and mythological theory provides a boundless
supply of ideas for character and plot. [...] If you feel that your script
lacks a strong or engaging sense of conflict, then the different
interpretations of psychological conflict in this book may give you the
inspiration you need."

Let's
consider Black Swan again (and do not read the
following if you haven't seen the movie). When I saw it a couple of years ago,
I thought it was a nearly perfect movie: Organic in all its parts, beautifully
staged and with a grandiose finale, it also featured a protagonist with a
psychological dysfunction that served as plausible motivation for the protagonist's
actions. What I didn't immediately realize, though, is that this perfectly
cohesive characterization didn't add to, but rather subtracted from the film's
complexity. In fact, director Darren Aronofsky makes extensive and informed use
of psychoanalysis in the film, to the point that, as we approach an analysis of
it, we realize that it's not really a matter of using psychoanalysis to make
meaning emerge, but simply to recognize how the director has exploited it in
the creative process. So that when we describe the insane relationship between
Nina and her controlling mother, or discuss the protagonist's possible
schizophrenia, we are not giving a psychoanalytic interpretation but simply illustrating
the mechanisms driving the plot − an activity that is worth doing, but has
nothing to do with psychoanalysis and everything to do with narrative
techniques and character design. Psychoanalysis can no longer be naïvely used
as an interpretive tool once we acknowledge that it has become an integral part
of an author's creative palette.

Maybe
Alfred Hitchcock committed the original sin: According to what he stated in his
famous interview with François Truffaut, with Spellbound (1945) he intended to make the "first picture on psychoanalysis". But
if Hitchcock's foray into Freudian territory was a pioneering experiment in a
one-of-a-kind career (he later brought this technique to perfection with Psycho),
in my opinion the exploitation of psychoanalysis in more recent movies has
become a sort of fashionable device, in most cases causing the movie to lose
depth instead of acquire. All we are left to do is to follow the breadcrumbs left
by the filmmaker to let us unveil the schema he or she has carefully arranged
for us. There's no magic in this process, for the film itself supply us with the
instructions for use. In the case of Black Swan, Nina's
schizophrenic disorder is revealed, for example, in a moment when she meets her
evil Doppelgänger − a scene that is as fascinating in its realization as it is literal-minded in its symbolism. Mirror scenes also abound, an obvious
choice if one wants to depict a fragmented personality. But I suppose it's time now to talk
about Nymphomaniac.

Among other
things, Von Trier's two-part film can be viewed as a long, verbose
psychoanalytic session. The director makes no mystery about it: We don't have
to ruminate much to recognize Joe's therapist in the erudite, analytical-minded
Seligman. As Joe delivers her confessions about her hectic sexual life, she receives
an almost immediate interpretation from Seligman. When Joe tells about
"lubricating" at her father's deathbed, Seligman quietly observes
that it's quite normal to have sexual reactions following a great emotional
shock. Here, like in many other scenes, we are not free to fantasize about
Joe's motivations for what she does, since our conjectures are frustrated by
Seligman's convincing, reassuring interpretation. For that matter, the film's
title already contains the diagnosis of the protagonist's disorder.

This frame
device constitutes a tyrannical point of view that at times even ends up as
irritating. Joe herself complains in more than one occasion about Seligman's non-judgmental, frigid approach, as if she was asking
not so much for an explanation of her actions as for a firm condemnation of
them − she apparently desired a confessor, but found a therapist instead. This
excess of interpretation has the effect of thwarting any moral objection we
viewers might raise to Joe's behavior, encouraging us to concentrate upon her
developmental path instead of censuring her supposed misconduct. We
are asked to enjoy Joe's tales and empathize with her, any attempt on our part
to feel morally superior failing miserably amidst Seligman's deluge of words.

As I have
explained earlier, I generally find the use of psychoanalysis as storytelling
device more often than not an efficient way to disguise as complex
characterization what is essentially a paint-by-numbers formula. That's why
Seligman's character in Nymphomaniac seems to me
particularly interesting: His presence in the story exposes and ridicules
this trend. In fact, Von Trier's approach is to toy with symbols, so dear to psychoanalysis,
like in the openly ludicrous scene where Joe has a vision about levitating in
the presence of (no less) Messalina and the Whore of Babylon, or when she
recognizes the shape of a handgun in a Rorschach-like tea stain on the wall. Free
association technique gets a dose of irony as well: Note how easily Seligman's
discourse jumps from seduction to fly fishing, from S&M practices to
mountain climbing. On hearing his disquisition about Prusik climbing knots, Joe
bitingly remarks: "That was your weakest digression yet". All
psychoanalytic paraphernalia having been neutralized, we are induced to follow
Joe's sexual odyssey without any comfortable categorization to rely on. When we
approach the film, we expect to find exactly what the title promises: a
character with a nymphomaniac disorder. But as we leave the theater, Joe
concretizes for what she really is: neither a typified individual nor a clinical
case, but a flesh-and-blood human being.

On the
other hand, what Von Trier seems trying to tell us is that knowing the origin
of a psychological problem does not necessarily lead to its solution. This is
particularly the case if the patient doesn't want to be cured because he or she
likes to be that way. All we can do with Joe is accept her for what she his, because
she is not going to change. In this sense Nymphomaniac can
be regarded as one of the most elaborate and devastating attack ever launched
against psychotherapy (well, Antichrist was another diabolical
one too) and the irreverence of the film's last scene leaves no room for doubts
about the inefficacy of Seligman's treatment. Did we expect Von Trier to have
mitigated his provocative vein? Accept it or not, presumably he's not gonna
change anytime soon.

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